Jewel Throne is:
Jesse Huovinen - vocals
Toni Koskinen - guitar
Mika Sallanen - bass
Jouni Kurikka - drums
CONTACT/BOOKING: jewelthronefinland AT gmail DOT COM
Jewel Throne Biography January 2024 by Pekka Karse
JT mark 1
Jewel Throne rehearsed for the first time on May 1st 2019, so that´s where the story really begins, although all the members of the first three piece lineup of the band were already very experienced before the creation of the band. Starting their personal adventures in music in the late 80´s, these guys already had “been there, done that” a few times with lots of different bands, hundreds of gigs, dozens of demos and a few albums released and all the usual stuff - even though none of the original members (Mika Sallanen – Bass/vocals, Jari Yrjänäinen – Guitar/vocals, Jouni Kurikka – Drums) had never really gotten much closer of becoming “rock stars” or even very well known with their previous bands - among the bit more known of them were bands like Spirit Disease, Anger Cell and Scarpath - all of them released an album or two but things never really worked out.
So, where were we? Ah, yes... it was the spring of 2019 and the bass man had a few new songs and one leftover song from a previous band. He also had a burning desire to have some fun by making some simple, loud and ugly no-bullshit metal music so he asked two of his old friends/former bandmates to help with these tunes he had. They agreed to join the band. Within a few weeks they were already recording the material they had. Three digital-only EP´s were released in quick succession ("Old Metal", August 2019, “Poetic Justice”, October 2019 and “Silence Shrouds the Ruins”, December 2019). Musically all the EP´s were somewhere within the grey area between the very early thrash metal and Venom/Motörhead style rock/metal music. These early works can now more or less be considered as rough sketches of what was to come later.
JT mark 2
In early December 2019 a while before the third EP was already recorded but not yet released, it was time for the first lineup change. The three original members were joined by vocalist Jesse Huovinen and guitarist Toni Koskinen. Rehearsing of new and old material began right away. The new songs were great and the new lineup sounded better than the old one, so it felt like the time was right to records new stuff in early spring 2020. But then the COVID-19 pandemic began, messing up with everyone´s plans everywhere and everything had to be stopped. However the song structures and arrangements were, well, not quite finished but already at a level that the guys felt acceptable, so they decided to see how things would go and record the songs anyway – separately in various places because of the pandemic. It just took a bit longer than they had planned - the drum recordings began in early April 2020 and by August everything was finally in the can. The five song "Obscure Relics" EP was released on 20 November and was also later released on tape by Fetusvomit Records.
JT mark 3
At the end of October 2020 the band decided to let Jari Yrjänäinen go and continue as a four piece band with the new lineup being Jesse Huovinen – vocals, Toni Koskinen – guitar, Mika Sallanen – bass, Jouni Kurikka – drums. COVID-19 was still going strong and after more unplanned breaks they were able to start recording more new tunes a year later in October 2021. The recordings were finished in December and the “Illiterati” EP was released in early February 2022.
During the rest of 2022 the band continued to take giant steps forward musically and lots of songs with a much harder edge were written. Finally in April 2023 Jewel Throne started recording their first album. They began working with 20 songs and in November 2023 the recordings ended with 17 finished songs. At the moment (January 2024) the mixing is still going on, but they released their first new song Mental Self-Mutilation in almost 2 years on January 5, 2024.